Since the first large UN-led electoral missions at the end of the 1980s,
electoral assistance has played a significant, sometimes fundamental role in
the democratisation processes of many countries undergoing political
transitions. However, the period of regime changes that followed the break-up
of the Soviet Union was characterised by enthusiastic and often unconditional
support for electoral processes in Eastern Europe and in many countries of Sub-Saharan
Africa, Latin America and Asia. This
enthusiasm for elections spread despite the fact that international assistance
was very often uncoordinated, promoted inappropriate or unsustainable electoral
systems and procedural models and indeed sometimes served to recycle former
warlords as legitimately elected leaders.
Development agencies often provided conspicuous financial contributions
for particular electoral events (generally requested by the partner countries).
The support for rushed and costly election processes, using temporary
institutions and massive deployment of international expertise was based on the
belief that fast elections could be the panacea for transitional countries’
structural and economic problems and set a sort of democratic virtuous circle
in motion in the partner country. Instead 
however, they often made the
achievement of the partner countries’ long-term development goals far more
difficult. By promoting this type of intervention, the international community
often locked the transition countries into an artificial and unsustainable
“democratic development process” steered from outside and not from within, with
high financial and technical demands, but without letting the “assisted”
countries benefit from the skills and knowledge transfer which is an essential
component of technical assistance projects.
In the conduct of the so-called ‘second generation’ of elections after a
regime transition, a two-fold pattern developed: a) on one end of the spectrum,
some countries were left to their own devices by the international community in
a crucial but overlooked phase of their democratic transition, having been prematurely
identified as being firmly on the ‘democratic path’ or no longer considered a
political priority; b) at the opposite end of the spectrum, development
agencies and assistance providers stayed the course in certain countries, but
started from scratch every time there was an electoral event and a request for
electoral assistance. In doing so, development agencies also tended to make
their own identification of the needs that should be addressed, although this
did not always match with the priorities perceived by the partner countries.
In both situations, development agencies were forced to rethink their
approach. However, the almost complete absence of proper coordination between
different bilateral and/or multilateral development agencies systematically
impacted on the lack of effectiveness and sustainability of the electoral
assistance efforts. Even if the partner country’s Electoral Management Body
(EMB) had defined its needs clearly, the interest expressed by different development
agencies to ‘flag’ their support to a highly visible and attractive event often
led to overlaps and gaps in 
meeting the actual needs. Traditionally, short-term
targeted training of polling officers, ad hoc electoral material and voter
education were the items preferred by development agencies, despite the fact
that in most cases they were not sustainable and did not produce lasting
effects that contributed to the overall process of development and democracy
building in the partner country.
With the end of the 1990s, the initial wave of enthusiasm for supporting
electoral processes gave way to a more reasoned and realistic approach. In many
cases, international electoral assistance was crucial to prevent undemocratic
forces from performing mass manipulation of the results, to strengthen the
legitimacy of emerging democratic groups and parties and to persuade
ex-combatants to accept the rules of the democratic game. Nevertheless, serious
disappointments were also recorded in terms of the expected democratic
developments in countries were elections had been made possible with international
funding and expertise. This led major electoral assistance providers to
acknowledge that a positive evaluation of elections had to be based on a larger
scale of parameters, of which the peaceful conduct of polling and the sound
logistic organisation of the electoral event was one very visible factor, but
certainly not the most fundamental one. These hard lessons convinced assistance
providers that “a successful electoral process is built upon
the legitimacy of the institutional frameworks”[1]
and that these frameworks are made of a number of crucial and interlinked
components. Persuading development agencies’ decision-makers proved to be a
tougher task.
Next: The Wake-Up Call of the New Millennium
[1]
Andrew
Ellis, “From Optimism to Realism: Ten Years of Electoral Development”, in
International IDEA, “Ten Years of Supporting Democracy Worldwide”, IDEA 10th
Anniversary Publication, May 2005, page 100.
